The Anti-Fascist Babe Club – A New Social Justice Activist Hub Has Arrived

Olivia Woodward of Petticoats and Patriarchy has set up a new social justice and activism hub to help her find the others.

Welcome to the Anti-Fascist Babe Club.

As a society, we’re obsessed with communities. Whether it’s building clubs and movements filled with like-minded people, selecting a group of people to become our chosen family or attacking ‘echo chambers’ and ‘bubbles’ for being exclusive and close-minded, we as a species can’t stop building, dismantling, and talking about communities.

Myself included.

Maybe it’s because I’m terrible at making friends. Or maybe it’s because the collective power of a group gives me energy. Either way, I’m fascinated by communities.

Unfortunately, I’ve been struggling to find my own.

Offline, I’m an angry-shouty feminist that people are intimidated by (#sorrynotsorry). Online, I’m also an angry-shouty feminist that people are intimidated by. For a long time, my main online community has been the blogging community. But it turns out the blogging community isn’t too fond of angry-shouty feminists and political types. Go figure.

So I started to look for other communities – communities made up of the fearless writers and amazing activists that I knew were out there – and then it hit me. There aren’t any.

Now, let’s be clear. I don’t mean there aren’t hundreds and thousands of people just as angry, just as shouty, just as political as me. Hell, there are hundreds and thousands of people who are angrier and shoutier and more political than me.

Nor am I saying that there aren’t hundreds of organisations dedicated to fighting oppression and changing the world. There are. Of course there are.

But I realised that it all felt rather disparate. That there was no central place for activists and feminists and social justice types from across the world to come together and organise and fight and resist.

That’s when I decided to start the Anti-Fascist Babe Club.

The Anti-Fascist Babe Club is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s a club or a community for babes (and babes can be people of any and all genders) that are against fascism and oppression.

It’s an online community – with dreams of breaking into the ‘real’ world as well – where activists and social justice types can come together to share stories, find support, collect practical ways to change the world, and enjoy any and all of the small victories that come our way.

More literally, it’s a Twitter account (with a soon-to-be weekly Twitter chat) and a weekly newsletter. But there are also plans for a book club, podcast, and eventually real-life physical meetings and discussion groups.

So if you’re tired of watching the world burn around you, I’m here to welcome you to the Anti-Fascist Babe Club.

If you would like to be part of the Anti-Fascist Babe Club, please sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Twitter. You can also get involved in sharing news, petitions, demonstrations, and anything else by using the hashtag #AntiFascistBabeClub on Twitter and Instagram.

A snippet from the first Anti-Fascist Babe Club newsletter:

“Activists who have been around decades longer than I told me to hold onto my hope, because the disillusion would come. Black women who have been holding up and driving forward movements for centuries told me, with the kind of knowing that only centuries of systematic murder and oppression gives you, that I would get tired.

I didn’t believe them. Maybe it was my youth, that makes me feel like I can do anything. Maybe it was my white, middle-class privilege, which has meant i’ve never really had to fight like this before.

Whatever it was, I didn’t believe them. But now it’s March and the hope has faded. The adrenaline has worn off and the fatigue has set in.